What Do Classicists Think? Perspectives on Politics, Scholarship, and Disciplinary Crisis

summary:

This article presents a representative, "state-of-the-field" picture of what US classical scholars think about issues of prime importance to their discipline. It offers results from a large-scale survey of randomly selected members of the Society for Classical Studies. We demonstrate not only what classicists think about key questions, but also how attitudes diverge on the basis of differing political ideologies, genders, ethnicities, and incomes, challenging impressionistic assumptions about the discipline. In light of the survey data, we also present ideas for the field to respond to the pedagogical, intellectual, and financial pressures of contemporary American higher education.